zid

The impossible possible

2007-11-12T13:42:00.000-08:00

So a teacher teaches a class of 4th years across the oceans... cool.

Amazing how the World has changed in the last 20 or so years. Computers, Internet, Broadband... 3 things that didn't exist (for the rest of us) 20 years ago, 3 things that are indespensible now, three things that have forever changed the way we work, play and live.

And the treasure of free software!!! Practically everything you need to fire up your computer into a super Working/Entertainment/Communication/(Take your pick...) Machine is yours for free. You don't have to choose between offerings - you go where your friends recommend, try out everything and stick with one, more or all of the above... And with Web 2.0's new found interactivity in the browser, it has come to a point that a free download looks like too much work (talk about spoilt).

So now it is possible to have two teachers, without a budget, coordinating a class between the UK and New Zealand, the teacher in NZ teaching a ICT graphics class, a classroom of 4th years learning avidly on their computers(under the hawk eye of the second teacher of course) in the UK, following along as their teacher talks on skype and demos on skrbl (did I mention - no budget?).

The most amazing part of the whole tale? That it doesn't astound, that we take all this in our stride.
Kid in a candy store? Bah! he's got nothing on us.

Son of video

2007-10-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

First there was the skrbl video on YouTube. Released January 22nd 2007 (ah the good old days... sigh!) with commentary in German.
And now many moons later here is (trumpets & drums) another.

This video is by a teacher & shows the skrbl whiteboard in action as a classfull of students discuss Arthur Miller online. The quality is a bit fuzzy but it really shows off skrbl in action. With all those students skrbling simultaneously, the whiteboard is like a live thing. I can imagine how good it must feel to a teacher just watching the online interaction freeflowing action, reaction, collaboration... 'group think' is a good description.

I've blogged about skrbl in the classroom before and I think this is the same teacher.
Thank you sir.

Veni, vidi, ship

2007-09-05T22:55:00.000-07:00

This is a very exciting time for us - We just launched the skrbl team edition and this is a big deal because it is our first paid service. Go on try it out, we think you will find its cool new features very useful.

Skrbl is doing fine, and we thank our users for making these numbers possible, essentially since Dion Almaer's little mention in December 2006.

But I would be remiss if I did not add the proper disclaimer - We counted all the users who ever used skrbl. That is people who joined a whiteboard and logged some activity on it. This means some users will have been counted multiple times - especially anonymous guests (for obvious reason) and users with multiple accounts. The whiteboard count represents all whiteboards created, not necessarily whiteboards that are active today.

Those were the numbers in late August, we'll update them again in October. Once again thank you folks for using skrbl, we hope you also try out the team edition and make it a success.

Boggle your mind.

2007-06-26T18:38:00.000-07:00

Check out this video, I first saw it here .

Description from You Tube - "An official update to the original "Shift Happens" video from Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod, this June 2007 update includes new and updated statistics, thought-provoking questions and a fresh design. For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com -- Content by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod, design and development by XPLANE. (more)"

Though the presentation focuses on the Education system, my take away is this - When people think & care about the changing World and the potential of technology (and Web 2.0) to make a difference, exciting stuff is bound to follow.
We ain't seen nothing yet, & I can't wait...

vox populi anyone?

2007-06-06T22:53:00.000-07:00

The 2012 London Olympics Logo is generating a lot of controversy. Check out some of the reactions, also here & here, apparently the logo also induces eplipsy!!!

The logo is basically a stylized graffiti like rendition of '2012', yet it generates some pretty strong reactions for something so inoccuous...
But why am I talking of the olympic logo in a blog about Ruveka and it's products (skrbl, tweebo & graffiti)... well I connect those dots as you read on(shameless plugger strikes again! :).

Here are the ironies I see in this story
The olympic committee wanted to connect with the 'young, edgy' crowd so they went to a graphic design company.
A design agency, got paid $800,000 to come up with this 'graffiti'. I bet they even had 'focus groups'.
The anti logo movement is currently in hyperdrive, letters to editors, online petitions, the works...
News outlets jumping on the anti logo band wagon are launching individual 'design your own logo' competitions presumably to come up with a logo of the people from the people.

Apparently nobody quite gets it.

If the olympic committee wanted to connect with 'the people', why contract with professional middle men?
Individuals submit logos to newspapers, then what? A vote? How unoriginal.
Here's an idea, put a blank slate in front of 'the people', let us create what we like, let us change what we don't. Watch us vote with our erasers, pencils & brushes. If you have to have professional artists, sure, but consider the artists' work a first draft, and let us at it with our pencils, erasers et al.
The end product will be all the better from our input. In any case it will be something other than just another corporate brand with a short shelf life. It will be something we made, & we will love it all the more for that reason. We will own it, you may the one collecting the royalties, nevertheless, we will own it.

Anyone have Sebastian Coe's email?

Massaging the Medium

2007-05-17T22:51:00.000-07:00

Heard of Graffiti from skrbl? A community whiteboard for your community. Basically a blank space you embed in your site, where your users can draw, write & basically create their own content.

This is a big deal, think of it from users' perspective, its an opportunity to talk back, to express an idle thought, or share a random whimsy. This is a community graffiti board, where all users independently create but in the same shared space. It is a new kind of shared community interactivity, and as it extends the medium it changes the game.

Enter the 'Brave new World' where your site does not remain wholly yours, your users take joint ownership. There is atleast that bit of your domain that takes on a life of its own, growing organically, adding color & surprise. Reflecting the wisdom of the masses or the chaotic babble of the multitude but in either case a real thing that you do not fully control.

Try it out, get a graffiti board from skrbl and let the mob rule.
If the medium is the message, massage it a little and see what happens...

Write Here, Write Now.

2007-04-13T17:06:00.000-07:00

This is a test of graffiti - skrbl's embeddable whiteboard. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Bloggers Block

2007-02-28T22:58:00.000-08:00

Things have been hectic around here (as you can imagine), good hectic.
An unfortunate side effect has been I've been updating this blog regularly, its been over a month since my last post.

The posting schedule has been better on the skrbling blog. Though recently I've averaged just about one post a week there too.

Well heres a resolution to do better, to be blogging more regularly; a commitment to be posting atleast (gulp!) once a week. After all 'random rants at nothing in particular aside', we do have a lot to talk about. First there's skrbl and where it's headed (some interesting experiments we hope to try out there), but also about other stuff we are working on.

Nice stuff, interesting, useful, fun... all the good things, but if we don't talk about it, who will? And then how will the 6 billion people out there hear about it :)?

So kind folks, I look forward to spamming you with increasing frequency, for as a 21'st century Descartes may have put it - "I blog therefore I am"!
;(

What the asdfs!!

2007-01-23T14:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I met an old acquintance and happened to mention that I was working on skrbl. This person immediately fired up his browser, started a skrbl whiteboard and proceeded to fill the screen with tags saying 'asdfs' (and other permutations of the same 4 alphabets) with some 'jlk' occassionally thrown in for variety.

Unfortunately this urge to type gibberish seems to be (IMHO) endemic to 'software testers' everywhere.
Note to testers - while testing functionality, do take a few seconds to think up appropiate content. Go a step further and simulate the intended use as you understand it. Basically emulate a user, the effort is very rewarding as it will give you a sense of the suitability of the application for its target audience. A large part of what makes the beta community so invaluable.

'Real users' don't test, they use, the testing is a unavoidable side effect.

Assuming that the coders have crossed their t's and dotted their i's, a customer using a product for the first time is basically evaluating it's 'suitability'. This subjective criteria of 'suitability' I define as - The quality that leads to an understanding in the users mind that "I can use 'this' product to do 'that' task.

I understand this 'suitability' to be something that ties in closely with, but is not 'usability'. It is perhaps the single most important metric of product testing. Sadly however, it is rarely recognized, let alone measured. What usually happens is some cursory effort during UAT or focus group testing at the end of the development cycle. sigh!

So testers - develop some empathy for users, get a feel for the product from the perspective of it's intended use or at the very least use real language, help stamp out gibberish.

scrap book

2007-01-09T16:41:00.000-08:00

Interesting what people think of skrbl, I thought I'd share some of what I saw...

Dion Almaer of Ajaxian of course started it all with this post.
someday I should ask him how he came across skrbl.

Jane Hart was quite early to, 'pick' skrbl as an e-learning tool.
Thanks Jane, here's hoping that e-learners around the World pick up 'whiteboarding online'

Stephen Downes of Downes Web thinks it may be a "flash in the pan..." ouch but he likes it.
Hope to prove you wrong about the "flash in the pan" thing, wish me luck.

Barry Dahl included us in his "Possibilities for 2007 List".
Thanks Barry, will check back in about a year.

Mark Oehlert at e-clippings wonders about business plans etc.
I do have a business plan for skrbl Mark, but then I have the advantage of knowing what we have planned in the coming months. And the plan better work too because we rely on our software to make a living(btw we are self funded & so far, so good :).

MOMB also covered skrbl.
Nice name that - Museum Of Modern Betas, post post modernism lives!

There's also been mention of skrbl in various blogs, bookmarking & tagging sites, we appreciate it all, not least the comments users have left us as feedback.

Thank you all for taking the trouble.

Scribbling...

2006-11-29T16:57:00.000-08:00

Ever needed to copy text from one computer to another? Got frustrated trying to reference complicated bits of text (GUIDs, registry keys, file paths…)? This is where the original idea for skrbl came from.

I work from multiple computers (2 laptops and a few servers), also I use remote access tools to get to offsite servers. Sometimes there is a need to copy text from one box to another – for instance an error code or debug message from test machines that I have to refer to on the dev machine. Sounds so very simple, but anyone who works from multiple computers can vouch for my frustration.

Sure there are workarounds
- Log into email from both computers and email yourself
- IM yourself using 2 different IDs
- Save your text in a file and share the drive
There probably are many other hoops you can jump through to make it happen, but we figured there had to be a better way. Getting a scrap of text from one computer to another should be as simple as 'copy AND paste', hence the core idea of skrbl- a web based clipboard. A place to park notes on the Web so you can get to them from any computer. From this original concept of sharing notes with yourself, it was natural progression to go on to 'share notes with others', and skrbl grew from a personal tool to also becoming a whiteboard for team collaboration.

Keeping in mind the simplicity of 'copy AND paste' we have tried to get that degree of simplicity and ease of use into the core skrbl functionality. It is the simplest thing on the web to start skrbl, just one click, you don’t even have to login or register! It’s equally easy for others to get to your whiteboard – just give them your URL.

This is just the beginning for skrbl, while it is useful as is, we are working on adding new features. Saving and sharing notes on the web is the first step, so many scenarios suggest themselves that it is difficult to pick one. Our users are a big help, we rely on you to tell us how you want to use skrbl, and we prioritize what you ask for. The end goal is to grow skrbl into an online ‘desktop’, with features for personal use and for team collaboration, to merge the convenience of your desktop with the access of the Web.

Hopefully we’ll get there… one feature at a time.

First Steps

2006-11-17T21:07:00.000-08:00

Getting started is an exciting, hectic and anxious process. It has been about a year now for us at Ruveka, a year during which we have worked on several product ideas, launched one web app (skrbl alpha in June), and delivered a few client project contracts (got to pay the bills -:). All in all busy and mostly fun.
Now we hope to move on to the next stage. Communication is the first step, this blog is a place where I can shamelessly talk about our applications, plans and related random occurrences. We are also remodeling the ruveka and skrbl websites to get them more focused on specifics.
These five months of Alpha testing with skrbl were a great experience. We got valuable feedback from our users (thank you all for all your help), that took us through two functional iterations and helped refine the family of related products. The current skrbl beta features our instant web whiteboard, designed to be simple and easy. The idea is launch it simple and resist the temptation to add features. Our applications will grow organically based on what you, our users, want so please let us know.
Next we will be launching some skrbl related products over the next few weeks. We hope you will help us test these too.
Wish us luck, and thank you.